Original Sin: Origins, Development, Contemporary Meanings.

Pitkin, Barbara

By Tatha Wiley. New York: Paulist, 2002. viii + 276 pp. $19.95 paper.

This clearly written overview of the development of the Christian doctrine of original sin seeks to trace the doctrine's classical formulation and demonstrate its ongoing relevance through selective examination of major figures (for example, Augustine, Anselm) and movements (for example, The Council of Trent). Part 1 surveys the development of the doctrine up through the sixteenth century, drawing almost exclusively on secondary studies. After its opening chapter on the character of modernity, Part 2 draws more directly on primary writings by Piet Schoonenberg, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Bernard Lonergan as examples of a critical retrieval of the doctrine for the present. While the discussion is clear and the selection of figures judicious, the survey approach results necessarily in oversimplification of significant nuances. For example, while the effort to argue for Augustine's role as a shaper of earlier traditions is admirable, the discussion implies that Augustine viewed concupiscence only as the penalty for sin and not as sin itself (63-65) and says that medieval theologians "exhibited no particular difficulties with original sin" (77). Yet readers get a hint of both the complexity of Augustine's thinking and the heated medieval debates about the topic of concupiscence (and original sin in general) when they are told in passing that Luther's alleged identification of concupiscence and original sin follows Augustine and Peter Lombard (96).

Those mostly likely to benefit from this book will be seminary students, especially those who think that the doctrine of original sin has no place in contemporary church teaching. Ph.D. students and scholars of church history will be more aided by reading primary texts.

Barbara Pitkin

Stanford University